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This message board is for the friends and families of people who suffer from a mood disorder.
It is associated with Anne Sheffield and her web site
www.depressionfallout.com
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Updated : Response to What not to do- How to destroy everything you cherish Part 2 Jan 2013-March 2013
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Re: Updated : Response to What not to do- How to destroy everything you cherish Part 2 Jan 2013-March 2013
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TeamBB
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Feb 16 13 12:51 PM
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Hi WW,
This is MadBeggar's wife. I have posted using his account before, but have finally decided to create my own. Even if I rarely posted, I come relatively regularly in these forums and I must admit, I have been following your story in particular, probably because it sounds so similar to ours. However, I haven't posted before on your story because I was afraid of one thing: I was your wife a few years ago, and even if my relationship with my husband is now the best we've ever had, I still feel anger once in while regarding his betrayal and I was afraid to be too harsh on you just because of my past.
But reading your most recent posts made me change my mind because it echoes so much with what my husband and I had to go through.
Here is how I understand your story and I'll explain after why it feels so similar to ours. A few months back, you got you're "clarity" back, which seems to have awaken an irresistible sexual appetite, that eventually led you to cheat on your wife. While you were still cheating on your wife, you started posting here, expressing how bad you felt but still couldn't stop from continuing doing so. What you were expressing at that time was shame, not understanding what was happening to you or your relationship with your wife. Then, all of a sudden, you erased all these posts in January, and "updated" your story. However, your update looked to me like you erased anything that was saying how painful it was for you to cheat on your wife, how shameful you felt... Your story started sounding like "it's all her fault" and you started focusing more on your treatment and what you should do to be able to leave her. It almost sounds like two different persons!
Now here is why I think your story is so similar to ours. It might not have been expressed that way in my husband's original posts, but we have continued working very hard on our relationship, trying to figure out why it went wrong to make sure it wouldn't happen again. So my husband was going through a MDE and an incredible amount of stress a few years back. At the same time, I had just finished school and was about to start on a new, very exciting job. My husband being already under a lot of pressure, and wearing his depression goggles, saw this as a gigantic threat. I was about to become financially independent, so in his mind at that time, he was convinced I was about to leave him. He never said anything at that time, started to feel even more alone, so he became vulnerable to my "friend" proposal and eventually cheated on me. This is more or less the story we have posted, but here is something new, that we have realized after our original posts: it wasn't the first time that my husband was behaving in such a way. It was just the first time it had gone up to a physical point. Instead of talking with ME about our issues, asking ME for support, expressing to ME when he felt down, he was talking to friends, coworkers or even strangers about what was really in his mind. Of course, he always depicted me as the bad guy, because what he was looking for at that time was support, people to encourage him, and feel sorry for him. However, he eventually realized since we have started to fix our relationship that this behavior was just feeding the beast that depression is. This behavior doesn't push you to feel proud of yourself, it just feeds the sense of shame and worthlessness.
Now here is how my husband broke the pattern for both of us: he decided to talk to ME. Not friends, not coworkers, not strangers on a forum. He told me the truth, and decided to start fixing the problem with ME. Now don't get me wrong, I think these forums are amazing: the love, support, almost endless source of knowledge on how depression works, etc. But they are really, truly helpful only if they are used the "right way" if I may say :-)
I'm hoping I don't sound too harsh, but I see so much of my husband in your current behavior. Here are a few questions that I would have liked someone to have asked my husband a few years back and I'm asking you now:
- What induced the change in"clarity" a few months back? I mean inside you, what were you feeling before, and is gone now? What did appear? If you already have an answer, maybe try to challenge it?
- How do you think your wife feels like now? And don't answer that question in a way that will only feed the beast. Try to answer it almost as if you were a stranger. The point here is to try to make you feel empathetic, not shameful. And if i may, even chose on purpose to believe that what she is doing comes from the heart.
- Why did you cheat on her? And why did it stop?
- Why are you here talking to strangers, instead of talking to her of what is probably one of the biggest challenge your relationship has had to go through? And I would add here, work very hard not to put the blame on your wife or say that you want to protect her.
- Have you REALLY tried to convince her to go to couples therapy? Asking once doesn't count on my book. Have you really expressed how YOU feel about your relationship? How confused you are? She probably knows that your relationship is not working and she might have refused to go for many reasons, one of which may be that she doesn't want to talk about how she feels because she wants to protect you because she thinks you are depressed and doesnt want to add to your burden. If you really want her to go, you will have to reassure her one way or another...
- Is your wife really depressed or are you projecting that on her too? You are already blaming her for having cheated on her, for changing, etc all of which you did, not her, and now you are describing her as being depressed too? So she carrying all the burden! Like my husband who was convinced I wanted to leave him and was cheating on him, when he was the one doing all of that, not me. He just projected these feelings on me, believed that I was the one feeling these feelings, so he wouldn't have to feel them himself and start asking himself questions on how he was interpreting what was happening.
- Have you tried to look at forums of cheating husband/wife? People who have been cheated on? Depression is no longer the only side of your story now, and forums specific to infidelifty might shed a new light on how you feel right now. They were at least as useful to me, as the depression fallout forum is.
All-in-all, I sincerely hope you will find your way WW. And it's very much ok to be uncertain or in a grey zone right now! You have a lot to process and try to understand. You are, like all of us here, on a roller coster of emotions and it's sometimes hard to stay in that grey zone. But keep searching, it's worth it! You owe it to yourself :-)
TeamBB or L. Or MadBeggar's wife
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